Funding is requested to purchase major items of equipment to establish a fermentation facility to support the current and future research activities of several NIH-funded investigators. This fermentation facility will be centrally located in The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. No similar facility exists in the San Antonio area. The faculty- investigator user group presently consists of faculty in the Departments of Biochemistry and Microbiology in San Antonio and the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania. The output of cells and cellular materials from this facility will be used in the following research areas: 1) the effect of mutations on structure, function and folding of proteins; 2) bacteriophage assembly; 3) structure and assembly of multienzyme complexes; 4) structure-function relationships of ribosomal components; 5) effects of mutations on succinyl-CoA synthetase; 6) characterization of proteins involved in site-adherence in pathogenic microorganisms; 7) gene regulation and the DNA binding specificity of RNA polymerase; 8) the role of chromatin structure in the regulation of transcription and translation; 9) cooperative interactions between gene regulatory proteins; 10) DNA sequence determinants of protein structure; and 11) regulatory nucleotides involved in oxidative stress reactions. The installation of this fermentation facility will provide a major functional component of this institution's capability to pursue contemporary biochemical research.